We may all be gagging for it, but Laughter FM is a long way off

Within hours of the death of the American comedian George Carlin being reported, I received a couple of dozen emails directing me to various tribute sites where Carlin's routines were preserved for posterity. Most came from radio listeners who had first heard Carlin's scabrous comedy on a late-night show I did in Sheffield in the late 1970s.

It is rare that the act of talking, in between playing gramophone records on the radio, achieves anything worthwhile - quite the reverse usually - so it was gratifying to find I had introduced a truly great stand-up comedian and satirist to a new audience, albeit one restricted to South Yorkshire (and the North Midlands, as we used rather quaintly to boast).

The 1970s and early 80s was a golden era for the comedy album, and I was fortunate in finding a record dealer in Sheffield - anybody who was a student in that city in those days will remember Barry at the Broomhill Record Collector - able to track down the best of them.

While British comedy was often off limits on the radio for copyright reasons, a welter of brilliant, innovative albums were being released in the US. I played to death early Carlin albums such as FM & AM and Class Clown, as well as material from comedians such as Martin Mull and Albert Brooks, and sketches by comedy outfits such as National Lampoon, The Credibility Gap, and the Nutrino News Network. Barry found for me albums of early stand-up routines from Robin Williams and Steve Martin, before Hollywood sucked the comedy out of them.

Carlin was a particular favourite, though, and I continued to play him on various radio stations through the 80s and 90s. Every time I did I would get mail from someone discovering him for the first time. He has undoubtedly been a massive influence on generations of comedians who have followed. Even the late Bill Hicks, revered as comedy aristocracy, took plenty from the great old iconoclast hippy.

Unlike Hicks, Carlin combined his political and druggy routines with tracks that were just plain silly. I must have played a spoof advertisement for a book club hundreds of times - and it is merely a list of books you will receive "absolutely free if you sign up today". These included "such instruction books as; Caring for the Seated, Apartment Hunting for Devil Worshippers, Rid Yourself of Doubt - Or Should You?" and so on for three-and-a-half delirious minutes. A fair bit of Carlin's stuff satirised disc jockeys themselves, making it particularly suitable for airplay.

And where on the radio will you hear this kind of comedy these days - and older routines from the likes of Shelley Berman, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, and others? More or less nowhere.

Radio 2 does clip shows from time to time, and both Radio 4 and Radio 2 have had documentaries in the past about classic comedy albums, but the idea that a disc jockey might be let loose on the airwaves late at night to play random comedy tracks from his own record collection is too outlandish even to contemplate.

Comedy is a hugely underrated commodity on the radio. Everybody pays lip service to it, but ends up finding it too expensive, inconvenient, and, in these days of compulsive ratings watching, too divisive, to do. GMG radio, part of the Guardian Media Group, which also owns MediaGuardian, has recently invested £1m in "original" programming - a welcome initiative, but there is no sign of comedy as yet. Well crafted documentaries telling the story of Saturday Night Fever or taking a musical journey up the Mississippi river are the kind of programmes aimed straight at the radio stations' core audience, and not radically different from the kind of thing Radio 2 routinely does.

Radio 4 will testify to the risks involved in trying to produce humour. The comedy shows it schedules at 6.30pm, regardless of quality, have difficulty finding wide acceptance, and often receive unwarranted critical mauling. The station's two most consistently funny shows - classic I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (Humph lives on at Sunday lunchtime) and Just A Minute - were first commissioned in the dark ages.

Playing comedy album tracks on the radio may be little more than a substitute for original humour, and it is possible that once rights issues are sorted, the internet may be the place for the hundreds of vinyl comedy albums I have in my cellar. You would certainly like to think that somewhere, beyond the inevitable Carlin documentary, his ground-breaking material might live on.